HOW TO GET PERFECT PASTA

From gluten to salt ratios, researchers uncover the microscopic secrets behind al dente perfection

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Whether you prefer your spaghetti al dente or soothingly soft, it can be difficult to achieve perfection at home. Many of us will have experienced our pasta disintegrating into a beige mush - particularly for gluten-free alternatives.

So how much water and salt do you really need, and how long do you cook it for if you want optimal results? What's more, how should you amend your cooking process when using gluten-free pasta? A recent study conducted by Andrea Scotti, Senior lecturer of Physical Chemistry, Lund University, and his colleagues, published in Food Hydrocolloids, has provided answers by unveiling the physics behind the cooking process.

Turning to the Diamond light source, the UK's national synchrotron (a circular particle accelerator) facility, Scotti and his team studied the scattering of X-rays off pasta (at low angles) to uncover its internal structure. Then they went to Isis and to the Institute Laue Langevin, which are neutron facilities in the UK and France, and used neutrons (which make up the atomic nucleus along with protons) to shed light on the microstructure of regular and gluten-free spaghetti under different cooking conditions.

The study shows how the hidden structure of pasta changes as it cooks, and why gluten-free versions behave so differently.

The setup enabled these pasta researchers to investigate the structure of starches and gluten within spaghetti on small scales that spanned from tens of times the radius of an atom to thousands of times.